 Goto [ Index ] |
The Introduction goes over the book layout and also recommends certain other Hero books, especially Fantasy HERO and Dark Champions, given that the genre is almost equal parts of each. One book that's not mentioned but should have been is Hudson City: The Urban Abyss, given that at least one of the campaign settings here uses a just-add-magic version of Hudson City for the local info.
Chapter One: The Urban Fantasy Genre establishes the basic premises of the book. The author defines Urban Fantasy as a modern-day setting that incorporates elements of traditional Fantasy. The key being "traditional Fantasy." Dr. Strange is an urban mage, but much more a superhero; Harry Dresden doesn't wear costumes and fight Ditko villains. Likewise the paranormal investigation setups you see in Fringe and The X-Files are more Science Fiction or Horror than Fantasy, although Long acknowledges a level of crossover in the "Weird Conspiracy" sub-subgenre. Elements of the genre include giving computers and the Internet a mystical dimension, monsters and witches (both good and bad), dive bars and old bookstores, the latter apparently because "writers tend to like them". Another element is a certain sense of discontent in the main characters, or as Charles de Lint put it: "All the magic people want to be normal, and all the normal people want magic."
As with other Hero genre books, this section covers subgenres within the type, including not only the popular Hidden History (where everything seems like the real world but supernatural conspiracies are behind most events), Open Magic (a usually whimsical presentation of a modern world where magic is used as widely as technology, and for the same convenient purposes) and Monster Warfare (everything from Buffy to Underworld) but also Low Urban Fantasy, where characters are usually very normal people who have to deal with some strange magical element introduced to their everyday lives. There are several examples of such in short stories, but the most familiar examples in modern media would probably be episodes of The Twilight Zone.
Urban Fantasy HERO also brings up the “meta-genre” concept, where an author or GM combines Urban Fantasy with some other genre like Comedy (again, most often with Open Magic), Tragedy, or Horror. This also includes using the game book with other Hero genres like Champions and Pulp HERO. However, some of these combos are better ideas than others. In particular it's mentioned that Clarke's Law means that a sufficiently high technology level, like you get in Star HERO or Galactic Champions, may mean that magic is no longer powerful or unique enough to be special.
Chapter Two: Urban Fantasy Character Generation starts with Package Deals tailored to Urban Fantasy characters. It is specifically mentioned that those modern characters in the Urban Fantasy campaign who are not themselves supernatural should be built with the Package Deal ideas from Dark Champions, with this material specifically intended for the magical characters or those who cross both worlds, like the Mystic Detective. There is an “Anachronism” package for those medieval/fantasy characters who got teleported to modern Earth, but by the same token, they should probably be made as Fantasy HERO PCs. Some of these rules are cribbed directly from other Hero books (e.g. the Fae-Blooded package is from Tuala Morn). There are also rules for both Lycanthropes and Vampires (although strangely the Lycanthrope has a bite attack with Transform but the Vampire doesn’t). Given the power of these two types in particular, the book recommends that games which use such characters not bother with the Normal Characteristic Maxima rules (that are intended to cap most traits at a ‘human maximum’ of 20). Like other Hero genre books, this one also contains some advice on how to deal with the “stat duplication” you get with characters at the human power level, such advice usually meaning imposing arbitrary caps on stats or other such limits that the author admits may undermine HERO's principle of free choice but may be necessary to have sufficient variety in a PC group.
In reviewing character design, Chapter Two also goes over the particulars of Skills, including Analyze Magic, Power/Magic Skill, and what you get with Knowledge Skill of the Mystic World. There is a fairly brief review of Powers, but special emphasis given on how to run Clairsentience, given how many Urban Fantasy characters are psychic or use divination magic.
One of the listed Disadvantages covers Harry Dresden's peculiar relationship to technology: The more sophisticated an electronic item is, the more likely it is to malfunction in his presence. The book defines this trait as a Physical Limitation called "Gremlin" given how it handicaps a character in the modern world. (It can also be built as a Suppress power if the PC wants to apply it offensively.) The chapter concludes by briefly bringing up character equipment, namely whether the GM should charge points for magic spells when modern characters have access to mundane equipment for free. (One option is to simply charge less than the total Real Cost for spells, for instance dividing the cost by 3- this is the way magic works in The Turakian Age book, and it is also used as a rule in the Hudson City Shadows campaign shown in Chapter 4.)
Chapter Three: Gamemastering Urban Fantasy goes over GM advice for starting and running an Urban Fantasy campaign. First and foremost the GM has to decide the nature of magic in the setting, specifically what type of magic exists, what other magical elements (like monsters) exist in the setting, and how “open” knowledge of magic is among the population at large. These issues are somewhat interrelated. For instance in an Open Magic setting, magic tends to be more powerful and easier to cast than in a Hidden History game. The issue of which styles exist is not much dealt with here, and a GM could do it any number of ways. Generally the Hero fan should refer to Fantasy HERO for comparisons of the mechanics of how magic works within a given setting, and to The Ultimate Mystic for rules on how to design particular magic schools like Voodoo or Hermetic Theurgy.
In terms of magic power levels, the book uses the categories of Powerful, Average and Realistic (or 'weak'). Powerful magic is for all intents, superpowers defined as a magic special effect. Thus there is little functional difference between a Kabbalist and a Druid (or between these two and a mutant Energy Projector). "Average" magic is used by Heroic-level characters in most Fantasy HERO campaigns and usually takes heavy Limitations reflecting how magic works in Fantasy fiction. Also, magic tends to be subdivided into categories, so that the Shaman's signature trait is spirit projection while the Alchemist has magical gadgets but cannot use spirit powers at all. Realistic magic is based on the premises of real-world occultists (like P.E. Bonewits) who claim that magic simply uses ritual to focus innate psychic powers that act through physical laws; in terms of MAGE, it all counts as "covert" or "coincidental" magic. Thus it is also heavily limited but must also take modifiers (like Invisible Power Effects) to make each spell seem plausibly deniable- this is of course both an advantage and a disadvantage. The example given is using magic to open a safe: The Powerful mage simply throws a spell and the lock opens in one action, the Average (Heroic-level) mage recites a five-minute ritual in Latin and summons a demon who opens the lock, but the Realistic mage uses a similar ritual and then just afterward "coincidentally" finds the combination of the safe taped under a desk.
As for how “open” magic is, this is a campaign-scope decision that affects the basis of the whole setting. How does magic impact religion, or vice versa? Do magical races exist? For how long has magic been common knowledge? The SHADOWRUN setting is a great example of an Open Magic world where the magic has just returned and the recent “goblinization” of some former Humans created an instant minority that made previous human racial conflicts over skin color practically obsolete.
Even before the campaign setting, the book recommends defining the guidelines of character creation and power limits, given that as the focus of the campaign, the PCs will have more potential to affect the setting than anything else. Generally, the more cinematic the setting or the more “open” magic is to the public at large, the more starting points PCs will get. In the higher end examples of Urban Fantasy HERO, the author mentions that an “effectiveness ceiling” in Combat Value, Skill Levels, and such is more appropriate than a points ceiling, especially given both the high Active Points required for some spells and the fact that modern characters will have access to high-powered military weapons. Other suggestions for dealing with a player character “Arms Race” include using opportunities for PCs to lose such high-powered weapons, or make sure that they get confiscated by proper authorities. Of course that applies mainly to the mundane weapons; if you're in a Hidden History campaign where magic items are possible but not common knowledge, who if anyone polices their use? That question isn't dealt with.
Chapter Three then deals (briefly) with a variety of campaign subjects, like the tone of a campaign towards romanticism vs. gritty realism, the best ways to start designing a campaign for a given subgenre of Urban Fantasy, the typical hook-obstacle-conclusion plot setup, and the common archetypes of NPCs in the genre, such as the Unseelie Queen 'mastermind' villain or the Spirit Guide of the main character.
Chapter Four: Magic in the Streets: An Urban Fantasy Sourcebook is in fact the largest portion of the book, devoted to no less than four settings for Urban Fantasy campaigns, (two of them in Hudson City) along with story elements and defined magic systems.
Hudson City Shadows is the "just add magic" setting, using the previous Hudson City material as a backdrop. In this universe magic had always existed but was only recently (after the Industrial Revolution) codified and organized, and only since World War II (after a magical battle during the liberation of Paris) had it been widely known about. Today, "magic is like crime. Everyone acknowledges that it exists, and accepts it, even if they don't necessarily like it."
Magic is divided into the categories of cantrips (spells easily cast in combat) and rituals that are of greater scope but require time and resources to use. Magic is also divided into certain spheres- Pyromancy, Demonology, etc.- and each requires its own Skill Roll. There are certain other schools outside the traditional ones (one of the NPCs knows a few spells from Voodoo). In addition to the mages, there are also other factions, namely various Fae and the Vampyri (a magical offshoot of Homo sapiens who are not Undead, but require human blood and flesh to survive).
Invasive Species is so called because of the effect foreign elements- in this case, supernatural elements- have on a local ecology. The campaign is set in Reno, Nevada: "A casino built on top of a trailer park." Nevada in the real world is accurately described as having basic services "starved into emasculation by a declining, gambling-based tax base" and set up for steep economic decline in succession with its next-door neighbor California. According to Long, Reno was founded after the assassination of Civil War hero Jesse Lee Reno (a 33rd Degree Mason) as part of "a joint Masonic-Mormon ritual known as the Killing of the Sun King". Like most Western magical theory, this makes absolutely no sense but sounds really cool. The long term intent was to deliberately create a dark spiritual nexus that would draw monstrous beings like a flytrap, to be found and slaughtered. Having lived in Reno, I find this theory highly plausible.
Real magic, other than the powers of the monsters, doesn't exist, although obviously there's a lot of occultism in the setting. The main emphasis is on factional warfare, with the monsters organized into ethnic factions called Mythologies - thus you have both Mexican mummies and chupacabras in "La Raza Misteriosa" and then there's the One-Percenters white biker gang, run by an inner circle of werewolves. Opposing all are the wardens of the area, the Danites (basically the black-ops division of the old Mormon Church, based somewhat on actual history). In the setting you have the choice of a Sons of Daniel campaign (the Danites against everyone else), Renegades ('good' monsters against both the Mythologies AND the Danites) and Taking Care of Business (where you are part of a Mythology- basically an 'evil alignment game').
The Sixth Sun bears a pretty strong resemblance to the SHADOWRUN setting, with the magic cycle returning sorcery and magical elements to the world, but in an age of modern technology, which requires magic to adapt. In the history, magic returned in 1957, apparently by agency of the Aztec gods, and thus paganism has also made a resurgence. Interestingly, while the established "Abrahamic" religions have no magic, true believers in the traditional God are also effectively immune to magic (for free). It is a clearer example of an Open Magic setting than Hudson City Shadows, with most powers clarified in terms of class (attack level, on a Greek-letter scale), manifestation (how many targets it affects) and rank, so that a basic Energy Blast is Mageblast Alpha 1-1. There are also magic schools like Rune Magic and Shamanism outside the basic classifications. One of the other classes is Cybermancy, which allows a mage to use spells manipulating technology. There's also an entirely virtual MageNet that mages can access solely with meditation, although a Cybermancer is able to use the MageNet and "multitask" with mundane life at the same time.
Lines of Contention is the other Hudson City alternate setting, where a ruthless magus uses blood sacrifice and other evil acts to adjust the ley lines of the local environment to intersect with his sanctum and thus increase his power. The PCs' goal is to discover the plot and stop it.
In this magic system, a magus (pl. magi) is somewhere between a Hermetic mage and an Eastern mystic, in that he starts off at lower levels of "Ascension" with innate powers including "Bythos", or the magician's attunement with the universe (bought as Luck, with side effects) and the ability to transcend the weaknesses of the mortal body (bought as minor Life Support). At higher levels of Ascension, the character gets actual rituals, but these are of the "realistic" school and are very weak at a base level. However, by invoking the common Laws of Magic (like the Law of Sympathy) the magus can multiply the Active Points of his spell, increasing its power and possibly scope. Thus in practice most of the rites get rather involved (the ley lines of course can be used as multipliers of power), and it never hurts to have a lock of your target's hair.
The book ends with a one-page Bibliography. The Index is actually in a "free stuff" link on the Hero website (according to Steve, since the book is 200 pages exactly without the Index, adding the Index pages would have been extra printer expense and require an even number of pages when some would end up going blank).
SUMMARY
Urban Fantasy HERO has most of its meat in the example campaign sections, though again only one of them has an example of how an adventure in the setting would work. It does do a good job of reviewing the various subgenres of this highly diverse and popular field of entertainment. And it does touch on issues that are especially important to HERO gamers trying to run an Urban Fantasy game in HERO System, but it doesn't go much beyond a cursory level. In particular, the book does bring up the issues of using Normal Characteristic Maxima in a game with nonhuman PCs, or needing to buy spells in a game world where PCs already have the chance to get “wands of automatic missile fire.” But given how often such issues are discussed on the Hero Games boards, and how thoroughly the subject of magic in a setting was reviewed in the Fantasy HERO book, this book doesn't seem to go far enough in exploring the details and consequences of adding magic to the modern world. But then given again how varied the number of Urban Fantasy stories and approaches are, it might have been hard to make a definitive treatment of that issue.
In any event, I recommend Urban Fantasy HERO, but mainly if you've already got Fantasy HERO for review on creating the magical aspects of a campaign universe. By itself, it has enough campaign material for a GM to just copy-and-paste for a new game, but it doesn't go into much detail to sustain a campaign unless a GM already knows what he wants.
Style: 3
This book's style doesn't reach out and grab you, but at least it's good.
Substance: 4
Urban Fantasy HERO briefly reviews elements of the Urban Fantasy genre and spends much of its detail on examples of the genre as campaign settings, those examples being the main reason for a rating of 4 on Substance.
Please help support RPGnet by purchasing the following (probably) related items through DriveThruRPG.
